2023

Kanna Art Festival
Onishi, Gunma, JP

This work was made during my 6-week stay at the Shiro Oni artist residency in rural Japan and was presented in the group show during the Kanna Art Festival.

This piece combines many of the learned Japanese natural dyeing techniques with more experimental aproaches I tried out while in residency.

Written in the Rust, Bad Poetry, which is the name of both a poem written in residency and this piece, takes inspiration from the rural and decrepit town of Onishi. Old homes patched with layers of new tins, signs so rusty you can’t read them. So, you read what you want into them. I found solace in the idea that even though I couldn’t read these kanji signs, neither could anyone. The two main forms in this piece are taken from the illegible kanji contorted by rust.

The ribbons contain the words of my poem, sentiments projected onto the illegible signs. They are sunbleached onto work using Kakishibu (persimmon) dye and a reverse resist technique I developed. They represent the connection of the new and old. The rust in the work was dyed using the rusty tin roof of an old building in town. The blue piece was created using the inside of a kimono sourced at the flea market. I felt that it mimiced the patchwork tins of Onishi’s buildings, the texture was made by tapeing the textile to the side of an abondoned building and leaving it for a month.

This work has become significan to the way I utilize my dye craft. In a very experimental way I was able to manipulate textile by using the old town as my dyestuff. It was so special to use the actual subject of inspiration as the dyeing instrument.